On the way home, some blood
dropped from the skin of Medusa. Some versions say that from this blood
grew some herbs good to make remedies and poisons. Other say that the
drops fell on the dessert of Libya and that gave birth to poisonous
snakes that are still playing there tricks there.
During his
trip, moved from his way by the Winds, he got to the end of the
world and ran into the giant Atlas. Atlas had many riches, among them a
garden with golden apples. Once he was foretold that a son of Zeus would
steal him his apples, so when Perseus got there Atlas got very aggressive.
Then he took the head of Medusa out of his bag and stretched it out to
Atlas. What happened after is easy to guess... and it explains the
origin of the enormous mountain in Morocco, the Atlas mountain.
Perseus
continued his way and, when he was flying over the Phoenicians, he saw
something strange: a beautiful woman tied up in the rocky coast. She was
Andromeda, the daughter of the vain Kassiopeia. Once, Andromeda told her
mother that her own daughter would be much more beautiful than her, and
everybody knows the disasters that this sentence causes in mythology...
This time, Poseidon made the sea go up the Ethiopian coasts making the
life of the villagers an agony. When they asked a prophet, he told them
all white that they had to sacrifice Andromeda. After a long fight they
did it, and here is where Perseus comes into the story. Right before a
sea monster took her in its claws he jumped into the scene and started a
bitter fight with the monster. Finally, he managed to turn it into stone
with the head of Medusa and freed Andromeda.
Of course, they
were all very happy that the scaring monster had been taken out of the
way, specially her Kepheus and Kassiopeia, and Perseus got Andromeda as
a wife. They would marry in the state of the king.
But suddenly
they saw all the guests being surrounded by an armed crowd.
Phineus, the
brother of Kepheus, had already asked before for her hand, and now he
had came to kidnap the couple. But Perseus fought like a lion and,
although against 200 men he had no chance, the hero turned one by one
into stone with the head of Medusa.
After this,
Perseus and Andromeda went back to Seriphos. Perseus turned also the
king Polydektes into stone, transferred the power to the king's brother
Diktys, gave the head of the Gorgon to Athena because th, and left to
Argos with Danae and Andromeda.
Back in Argos
he got received like a hero, since his fame had traveled all around the
world, and they organized competitions in his honor. Perseus did not
take part in this competitions, but he wanted to throw the disc at least
once. So he did, although out of competition because otherwise he would
have won for sure. He threw the disc and the disc flied far far to
somewhere in the audience.
A scream went
out of the mass, and everybody knew that the king, the grandfather
Akrisios, had died.
Now, if you remember the beginning of
the story and the oracle... However, the Gods did not punish him. On the
contrary, people wanted to have him and his wife as the new kings.
But Perseus did not feel like taking the empire of
the dead grandfather, so he gave the rule of Argos
Megapenthes to a
relative, at the same time that he got the empire of Tiiryns. He and
Andromeda were loyal to each other till the end, something quite unusual
for a mythological story. When they died they both went up to the Sky in
the form of constellations. Perseus as a enormous constellation and
Andromeda as a little delicate star, that turns out to be a galaxy when
you look it from closer.
Perseus / Heracles / Theseus / The Argonauts / Odyssey / Phaethon / Orpheus
